joey looks over at him, eyebrows still pulled together slightly. "you're a jerk, you know that?" they both know that she's referencing several things at the moment, not just his words minutes ago.
"yeah," he tells her, shaking his head and looking a...
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"YOU SHOULD REALLY TRY AND GET SOME SLEEP, JO."
Joey looks away from the floor and up at Dr. Banner, who has since joined the Starks inside Tony's lab. He and Tony are sitting behind some fancy computer-y thing, which Joey's phone has been hooked up to for the past hour and a half while they try to track Heidi through The Call. So far they've come up with nothing, and Joey's been pacing up and down the length of the lab.
"Not happening," Joey weakly states, though she slows her pacing and brings her thumb to her mouth. As she bites the skin around it, she tries to gather her thoughts.
This had to have just happened. Heidi's been returning Joey's texts and calls all weekend, up until today. And whoever took her— Tony and Dr. Banner have a strong inkling that it's HYDRA— couldn't have made it far in a day, even by plane.
Why her? Joey wonders. Why now? Heidi. Her mom. A harmless woman. She doesn't want information, she doesn't have information— she has nothing to give, nothing that they want.
Could they have been looking for me? Joey wonders. After all, she's the one with Stark in her blood. She's the one with intel on the Avengers. She's the one with abilities.
But she's not in Queens. Her mom was, and she's who they got.
"Joey," Tony says tiredly, breaking Joey from her thoughts. She looks up at him, and it's then that she realizes her eyes are watering. She wipes them with her palms. "Please go to bed, honey. I promise you, we're going to figure this out. I just— please."
Joey's heart squeezes when he calls her 'honey,' so as tears begin to form in her eyes again, she just nods. She sniffs when she makes it to the door.
"Love you, Daddy."
"Love you tons, duckling," he replies.
As she lets the lab door close behind her, she goes for the elevator with no intention of going to her room— there is no way she can fall asleep right now, even though she's exhausted, in the truest form of the word. As the elevator starts to go up, she reaches for her back pocket, only to remember that her dad has her phone still. She can't check what time it is, but it doesn't really matter. All she knows is that it's late, and all evidence points to the idea that her mother was kidnapped today.
She steps out onto the residential floor, but she passes through the dark hallways, skipping past the bedrooms and heading for the bathroom. When she makes it inside, she goes for one of the sinks and starts splashing cold water over her face, as if it would magically straighten out her thoughts and give her the solution she needs to fix this.
When she turns off the faucet and comes back up, she startles as she notices a figure behind her in the reflection— when she gasps, her whole body flashes blue, and she catches a glimpse of it in that same reflection, causing her to lose all interest in the person standing just a few paces away from her, and instead stare at her own reflection. This is the second time today that her nerves have controlled her powers.
